


In The Pale Moonlight

by icarus_chained



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Catharsis, Happy Ending, Hope, M/M, Passion, Prompt Fic, Revenge, Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:16:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had started out as revenge. It wasn't anymore. Pitch and Jack, and battles in the moonlight that lead to something else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Pale Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt of: "Pitch Black/Jack Frost, by the light of the moon". The title comes from the phrase "To dance with the devil in the pale moonlight".

It had been revenge, at first. Brutal battles on shadowed snowfields, echoes of shattered staves and spurned connections. It had been meant to _hurt_ , to terrify and wound and exorcise the fresh horror of a hollowed existence. It had been vengeance for a world that no longer knew its enemy, for children who no longer saw their foe, for the curse of emptiness wrought once again on shadowed spirit-flesh. It had been ... it had been pure, once. It had been dark and bitter and clean. It had been safe.

It wasn't anymore. 

There was compassion in the frost youth's eyes. That was the killing thing. No matter what had happened, no matter how fierce and terrible the blows struck against him, no matter how furious and shattered his foe, there was always something in his eyes that spoke of sympathy. Of understanding. There was something in Jack Frost that understood every scream of rage, every half-swallowed snarl, every giddy and hysterical burst of laughter. Though he fought with skill and courage, though he yielded up no ground, there was no hatred to his fighting. There never had been. Only pain, and determination, and sorrow. Only a pale and icy sort of grief.

It was _infuriating_. It was a scourge on fractured nerves, on a heart scoured and hollowed by fear and fresh wounding, and Pitch had not been able to bear it. He had struck out all the harder for it, had hunted his prey across empty ice night after night after night, hounding the Guardian with blood and violence and hate. It was a wonder that none of the others had noticed. It was amazing that the other Guardians had never shown up to smash him flat upon the snow for his effrontery.

Or perhaps not. But no, no, even Jack Frost would not be so foolish as to deliberately keep this a secret. Surely not. He must have _some_ sense of self-preservation, must he not?

It had to end. This hunt, this vengeance. It had to change, to break, to snap like thin ice beneath their feet. Such a depth of passion could not be sustained eternally, and Pitch Black had so little passion remaining to him. He was a hollow man, now, a shadowman without a cause, and even his hatred could not burn indefinitely. Fear swallowed it, and emptiness, and the sweet despair of silence, and finally there had come a night, moonlit and still, when he came upon his prey and simply ... had not the strength to strike him. Had not the will to carry him through. He had come upon Jack Frost, wild and wary in the wilderness, and found himself standing emptily before him, lost as ever a spirit could be. 

That was alright, he'd thought. Let Jack fight him, for a change. Let the frost spirit _destroy_ him, if that was what he wished. Pitch had no more strength for protest. All his fury had fallen still.

But Jack hadn't. Damn him. Damn him upside and down, for never _once_ doing as expected, for never being what his enemies so needed him to be. Jack hadn't fought him, nor struck him, nor even turned him aside. It would have been so much easier if he had. It would have been so much less painful, and less bright.

"Don't stop," Jack had whispered instead. "Don't stop now. I know you only feel real when you're fighting something. I know it feels like the only way to be sure that someone knows you're there. You don't have to stop. I can take it. I can handle anything, Mr Boogeyman."

Pitch had stared at him. Gaped, blank and empty, and the world had suddenly yawned open around him. The world had suddenly seemed _stretched_ , white and infinite in the moonlight, a great gaping thing fit to tear a shadowman's hollow remnants apart. His hands went convulsively to his chest, clawing fingers clutching at his own flesh as though to hold himself uselessly together, and a sound came from his throat. Not a scream, not a cry, not a howl of rage. A creaking sound, an echoing croak from something breaking. Pitch had only barely heard it, when suddenly Jack had moved.

"No, no, don't do that," the frost spirit muttered frantically, grabbing hold of Pitch's arms with hard, white hands. Solid. Such a solid thing, cold and fierce and angry. "Come on, Pitch. You're supposed to fight me. What happened to all that anger, huh? I didn't think you'd ever run out."

Pitch made that noise again. It continued, this time, gained shape and traction, and belatedly he realised that it was a laugh. Or something like one. A harsh, cracked cackle, a sound of grief and pain and naked disbelief, raw _irony_. Jack stared up at him, close enough now to kill, his wide eyes only inches away, his throat almost level with Pitch's hands where they rested at his chest. Close enough to kill. Close enough to wound, to hurt, to tear, to make ... To make understand. Except. Except too late, apparently. Too late for that at all.

It stopped being vengeance, then. That moment. He should have killed Jack Frost, should have given it his last and most lethal try. He should have taken that throat in his hands and _killed him_. He hadn't. Damn it all and damn them both, but he hadn't.

He'd kissed him, instead. Not for any particularly articulate reason. He'd needed. Something, anything. Like Jack had said. Something to make him feel real. Something that would force someone to notice him, to realise he was there. A pale, white throat had lain only inches from his hands, and he'd found a mouth instead. He'd leaned down to take it with his own, pain and joy and anguish, and kissed Jack Frost beneath the moonlight, with the Guardian's hands upon him.

He didn't know what he'd expected to happen then. Violence, perhaps. Vengeance. Destruction. Something safe, and sane, and familiar. Jack's fury, to bolster his own. Jack's hatred, to take them out of despair and back to safer ground. He should have known it would be too late for that, too. The ice had cracked. There was no way out but down. Jack hadn't struck him. Jack had kissed him back instead.

It wasn't vengeance, now. It had started out that way. It had been safe, once, dark and savage and pure. It had been born in hatred and revenge, and been all the safer for it. 

Not anymore.

Now, when they met in moonlit snowfields, when they tangled shadows on great white sheets of ice, it was not with violence. Not alone. Now, when Jack seized his arms with pale, hard hands, when Jack laid him out across the snow, it was with pleasure more than pain. Compassion, courage, desire. All those bright and terrible things, the better to spear shadows apart. Jack came to him, touched him on the vast wheel of a white and empty world, made him feel real and solid and strong. It was a shining, hollow thing, the most beautiful terror in all the world. It was more than Pitch could bear, and nothing he could stop. 

It was not safe. It was not sane. It scoured him outside and in, left him hollow and lost as ever a spirit could be, and he _loved_ it. He loved it with all that he was and all that he had, and when he looked in Jack's eyes, when he held that bright spirit in his hands, cold and fierce and joyous, he knew that love and that terror to be shared.

They made love now by moonlight, amongst the shadows of their battlefields. Though it was terrible, it was not vengeance. Though it could be violent, it was not meant to hurt. It was ... it was _real_. In the end, beneath all else, it was something real, where so little had been before. It touched him, and it was enough.

And more, Pitch knew, than he had ever hoped for again.


End file.
